The Girl in the Scrapbook by Carolyn Ruffles (reading women TXT) 📕

attacking him, being beaten off by the servants, being arrested. It would be her fault. Maybe she should not have come back here at all …

Just at that moment, she heard a horse’s hooves trotting up the lane. Anxiously, she rushed to the window and peered out into the blackness. It was impossible to see who it was.

Then she heard Arthur’s voice. ‘Norah, I’ll be back in about an hour. I just need to take Jock here back up to the stables, rub him down and feed him. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

She pondered his tone of voice as she sat back down by the fire and decided she felt reassured. He had sounded normal. He had probably just been into town on business. Maybe he had met up with a friend and had a few pints at the Hare and Dog. She got up and walked over to the shelf where Arthur kept a few books. Most were books about crop or animal husbandry but there was also a copy of Treasure Island. She picked it up and read the inscription inside the front cover - Awarded to Arthur Fletcher, July 13th, 1910. First prize. She wondered what he had done to win first prize and realised how little she knew about Arthur’s early life. In the past, he had always been there to listen to her highs and lows. He had shared her triumphs and comforted her when first her mother and then her father had died. ‘I’m so selfish,’ she thought to herself. ‘I never really asked him much about his life; I never asked him how he was feeling.’ She resolved to be a better friend, no matter what the future might bring.

At last she heard Arthur’s footsteps and smiled as he came through the door. ‘I wondered if the bogeyman had got you,’ she said, reminding him of the day when she had refused to walk through the woods on her own because the bogeyman might get her. Eventually, he had walked with her and, after that, had taken to walking her home whenever she visited him in the stables.

He grinned. ‘No, it was the other way around. I got the bogeyman, otherwise known as Henry Collingworth.’

Dread flooded through her. ‘You didn’t do anything stupid?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Let’s put it this way; I didn’t do what I was sorely tempted to do but I have stopped him from having you arrested for assault.’

‘How on earth did you manage that?’

‘This morning I went to see my old chum Josh Hill. He’s a lawyer now - works for a firm in Bury. He agreed to help me and came up with a great plan. I told you that this is not the first time Collingworth ... er …  has done what he did.’

She nodded.

‘Well, Josh suggested we both ride over to Collingworth Hall and confront him with the threat of a court case should he decide to pursue prosecuting you. He would find it difficult to maintain his innocence against the word of at least six independent witnesses.’

‘But surely those women would be most reluctant to testify in court?’

Arthur smiled broadly. ’You know that and I know that. Luckily, Josh Hill was very convincing and said he already had six sworn affadavits in his possession. He told Collingworth that his good name and that of his lady wife would be dragged through the mud. The press would have a field day, he said. I wish you could have seen him. He was brilliant.’

‘So, he’s definitely agreed not to press charges?’ She could hardly believe what he was saying.

‘He definitely did. He was a snivelling wreck by the time Josh had finished with him. Kept pleading his innocence and saying he had no intention of pressing charges against you or any other servant girl. In fact, he said it was all a misunderstanding and he’d fallen and hit his head. Nothing to do with you at all. Oh, and by the way, he was sporting a magnificent black eye. You really gave him a belter!’

Norah shook her head. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she murmured. ‘I’ve been so worried.’ She took the two steps needed and threw her arms around him. ‘Thank you. And thank Josh too.’

Arthur hugged her close, savouring the moment. ‘It was nothing. I’m just glad it worked out.’

◆◆◆

The days drifted into weeks and fell into a comfortable pattern. When Arthur was at work, Norah would clean, tend the vegetable patch out back, fetch the shopping and cook. The villagers of Great Chalkham were delighted to see her back and then horrified to learn that she was staying in Arthur Fletcher’s farm cottage.

‘While he’s living there as well! Living in sin!’ the postmistress, Edna Barrow, confided eagerly to all who stepped over her threshold. ‘Her mother would turn in her grave if she knew, God rest her soul.’

‘Her father let her run wild after Iris died,’ Mrs Isabel Batty uttered sagely. ‘She was always hanging around those farmworkers. Might have guessed it would lead to this.’

‘I always thought Arthur Fletcher was a decent sort.’ Edna shook her head sorrowfully. ‘You’d have thought he would make an honest woman of her …’

Norah was not impervious to the stares and whispers. She guessed that her situation was much talked about but she held her head high as she walked through the village each day. She knew she could not continue to stay with Arthur but had yet to find a position. When she had asked at the post office if Mrs Barrow knew if anyone who required a home help or a nanny, she was greeted with pursed lips and a shake of the head. She was going to have to try further afield but was reluctant to leave the safety of Arthur’s cottage.

Also, she could not deny that the more time she spent with Arthur, the more she liked him and the more she eagerly awaited his return every day. He was good humoured and